(Below is an excellent explanation an adoptee author/therapist gave regarding the "Primal Wound") ~

"What you describe is the narcissistic wound. Before the age of 5

children tend to regard all events as being caused by them or happening

because of them. So when we are taken from our birth mothers we think it's

our fault.

This is an irrational belief but because it's traumatic and overwhelms the child's ability to cope it becomes hard wired into the brain. A child's brain is sensitve to events because of the hormones and explosion of brain cells primed to react to an

event. The more powerfull the event the stronger the brain reacts to it.

Now let me insert a theory by Silvan Tomkins; memories are not linear

they are organized in accordance with the amount of affect(feeling)created by

the event. That means memories dont fade with time when they are part of

an intense emotional event like separation. That memory will be as

strong 50 years later as it is the moment it happened.

In our case this affective event manifests as the primal wound and it

doesn't go away on its own. It creates a sense of social isolation, feeling lost,

dissconnectedness, loneliness in the presence of others, emptiness, and

the big affect that you are experiencing shame. We believe that since we

are responsible for our own mother's experience of relinquishment that we are not

worthy, hence the shame. Its a perfectly normal reaction. It is created

and recorded in our minds before we can think and then when we grow up

and can think logically, we ask "what is this I feel and why do I feel it?"

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If Moses identity had been expunged upon his adoption into Pharoah's household, how would he have known who he was to fulfill his call to lead his people out of slavery? The Church must take the lead in ethics and truth in adoption, including restoring the right of adoptees to their identities." Rich Urlaub